Young Aram Khachaturian had aptitude and a strong desire to study music. At the age of nineteen he was gambling that they would be enough to get him into a first-rate music school. Khachaturian was born on June 6, 1903, in Tiflis, in the Republic of Georgia, where he grew...

Fritz Kreisler was a master of the comeback, large and small. After World War I, the Austrian violinist had to win back his American audiences, and did so by playing concert after concert with irresistible virtuosity and taste. In 1935, when he admitted that many of the Baroque masterpieces he...

He joined the Nazi Party in 1935 and closed his letters with Heil Hitler , but in 1939 conductor Herbert von Karajan began a dramatic break with Hitler’s government. At thirty-one, Karajan was the musical idol of Germany, especially among the young. He was particularly successful in 1938 with a...

The violinist had achieved spectacular feats of virtuosity as a child, but as a young adult he had been shaken by a series of personal and professional difficulties, and now he was dependent upon a powerful sedative that helped him to cope with his latest crisis–the fear of falling off...

The crossing from Europe to New York left Igor Stravinsky with hours to fill and so he prevailed upon cellist Gregor Piatigorsky to work with him on a cello and piano transcription of his ballet Suite Italienne. Violinist Nathan Milstein also had some time on his hands and so he...

They were three of the world’s most formidable musicians, and in 1949 they were invited to perform together during a series of four concerts in Chicago’s Ravinia Park. Their togetherness would be short-lived. Pianist Arthur Rubinstein, cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, and violinist Jascha Heifetz drew huge admiring crowds at Ravinia, and...

In the spring of 1592 John Bull left London for Bristol, leaving his work as organist at the prestigious Chapel Royal to a subordinate. In a curious way, his leave of absence would provide a great opportunity to an undistinguished musician named William Phelps. For reasons unknown, Bull took his...

George Clinton and the latest lineup of Parliament-Funkadelic headlined Friday night's beginning of Madison's annual Brat Fest celebration, demonstrating to those who attended why Clinton and his merry band of funkateers are both beloved and essential in the evolution of pop music despite offering a truly conflicting, confusing performance.

When Confederate general Stonewall Jackson defeated forces led by Nathaniel Banks at the Battle of Winchester, Virginia, pianist and composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk was in Philadelphia. Although he was a Union sympathizer, he realized that the war could be dangerous for him regardless of his stance. He wrote in his...

In the spring of 1782, Mozart was a busy twenty-six-year-old composer with music and matrimony on his mind. On May 25 he wrote from Vienna to his father Leopold in Salzburg, and the letter was a team effort between Mozart and his intended. Mozart wrote: This time I really do...

Johann Sebastian Bach fathered four sons who became prominent composers, but he had other musical children, including a black sheep named Johann Gottfried Bernhard. In 1736, when a position opened for an organist at St. Mary’s in Mülhausen, Bach put in a good word for the twenty-year-old Bernhard, who was...

As one of Europe’s leading composers and performers, Felix Mendelssohn was also an astute judge of the talents of others, including his best friends. On May 23, 1834, he wrote to his mother of an encounter at a Music Festival in Aix-la-Chapelle after a rehearsal of Handel’s oratorio Deborah: Who...

One day in the 1770s the Prince of Asturias was eager to hear the latest quintet by Luigi Boccherini, and with a simple lapse of tact the composer turned the honor into a catastrophe. The story might well have been exaggerated for the sake of good gossip, but the confrontation...

Londoners were accustomed to visits from great musicians, but in the spring of 1764, king and commoner alike were astonished by an eight-year-old named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Young Mozart’s fame had come before him, thanks to his performances in Vienna and Paris. He arrived with his father Leopold and his...

Ludwig van Beethoven is said to have proposed marriage to Therese Malfatti, a supposition supported by the tender tone of a letter he wrote to her in May 1810. He referred first to something he had sent her, quite possibly a copy of a piano piece dedicated to her, later...

It looked like a lucky break or a big favor done for one composer by two others. The National Society of Music in Paris was putting on a major concert and composer Vincent d’Indy asked Ernest Chausson to withdraw one of his pieces from the program in order to make...

It was as if a floodgate had opened. Suddenly composer Henry Cowell was immersed in music. He rehearsed a band, taught musicianship to about 200 students a day, corrected papers and correspondence course lessons, played the flute and the violin, wrote a book on melody, and composed. The burst of...

Although he came from a musical family, Swedish composer Franz Berwald had trouble fitting into the musical scene in Stockholm, so in the spring of 1829 he pursued his art in Berlin, where he wound up in a profession that had little to do with operas and symphonies. In Berlin...